


Outside Your Mind

by ladycravenheart (Tauria)



Series: monkey tales [7]
Category: Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 15:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19087432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tauria/pseuds/ladycravenheart
Summary: Chiro has been plagued by the dreams for as long as he can remember... or so he believed. But perhaps those dreams are not only dreams after all...





	Outside Your Mind

**Author's Note:**

> an anon on tumblr sent me the prompt: "outside your mind"
> 
> which immediately made me think about how skeleton king invades chiro's dreams A LOT before he does his whole dying thing. and his waking mind too. so that made me think, how long has THAT been going on?? so here's one version of that particular train of thought. (i have more. will i write them? we'll see)

 The first dream happens when Chiro is just a boy.

His family is still together then—mother, father, boy. They live in Shuggazoom, in a penthouse apartment. Chiro is spoiled with love, affection, and many, many toys. His parents are his heroes; their apartment his world. He couldn’t be happier.

So when the dreams come, it makes no sense.

A giant skeleton man looms before him, dressed in tattered purple cape. His organs squirm on the outside, and his eyes glow red. When he smiles his mouth is full of sharp teeth and Chiro wants to _run_.

“What a little _pest_ ,” the skeleton man says, and his voice is dark and low and raspy and it makes Chiro’s skin prickle. He lifts one booted foot and brings it down on Chiro.

He wakes screaming.

 

His family falls apart. They go boating. Chiro was excited to see the fish—so excited. He had a book and everything. And then something happened. It got dark and stormy really suddenly, and the waves grew taller and taller until the ship sank beneath it’s weight. The lifevest around Chiro’s neck saved him from drowning, but it didn’t save his parents.

Chiro was taken far away from Shuggazoom, to a cold and empty house. His aunt and uncle were not kind and gentle and loving, and their house was not warm and welcoming and _home_.

But there was nowhere else to go.

It felt like the dreams got worse, after that.

This time he could see more than the skeleton man. They were in a really big cave—except the cave had windows, that looked out into stars. The skeleton man was sitting on a throne this time, instead of standing. He was playing with toys, pushing them around like a game of chess.

Red eyes caught on Chiro again, and they narrowed.

“ _You_.”

Chiro didn’t know what possessed him to speak, except maybe that the anger he bit back during the day time was too much to contain in a dream. “Yeah. Me. Who are _you_?” he snapped.

The skeleton man stood. Swished his cape. Brandished a skull-topped staff. “I am the Skeleton King, insolent fool. And I will not tolerate you trespassing in _my_ domain.”

Chiro scowled. “I’m not trespassing,” he said. “This is _my_ dream!”

The skeleton man, who didn’t deserve a title as grand as king, looked at him like you looked at gum on your shoe. “Dream? This is _no dream_ , boy.” He brandished his staff, and Chiro’s vision was filled with green light.

He sat up, sweating in his bed. His skin burned. He pulled his pajama top off, throwing it across the room as if it had scalded him. The shadows in the corner of his room moved—it was all he could do not to scream. He flipped his lamp on instead.

 

He started sleeping with a nightlight. First a little blue thing that only made the shadows seem darker. Then a Sun Riders lamp that glowed like a miniature sun.

The dreams continued well into his teens. He went back to Shuggazoom, to some elite boarding school his uncle thought would be ‘good for him.’ Chiro liked the classes well enough. Especially his science and mechanics class. Mostly he just liked being back at Shuggazoom. Visiting the arcade. Getting burgers from Mr. Gakslapper’s. Holographic ice cream. He even visited his old apartment building.

He avoided the lake, though.

The dreams didn’t come every night, like they had after his parents died. But if he went to bed angry, or upset, or scared, or any kind of negative emotion at all—he found himself back in that throne room, staring down the skeleton man who wanted to be king. Chiro took to avoiding people when he could. That didn’t keep him from being upset—but it helped a little.

The skeleton man never stopped being scary, but Chiro was grateful to him in a way. He had never dreamed of his parents deaths. Only happy memories of them. He never forgot—but he never dreamed of it. He was never trapped there in his sleeping mind. So even though he still dreaded the skeleton man’s appearance, he couldn’t help but be perversely thankful that it was _him_ , and not the dark waters of Shuggazoom’s lake.

The dreams had a rhythm to them now. He would mouth off, to prove that he wasn’t afraid (even though he was). The skeleton man would attack him.

Sometimes it went differently. Once, they had played chess. Chiro had lost—badly. The skeleton man had been so insufferably smug Chiro had thrown the board in his face. Chiro got zapped with the staff again. This time when he woke up his skin was red.

Chiro didn’t know what the dreams meant, or what his subconscious was trying to tell him… but he really wished they would go away.

 

When he was fourteen, he met the team. He was exploring, ended up playing a game of kick the can, and found a really cool robot. He thought it was a statue at first… but he was wrong. He woke them up and joined their ranks and thought: _maybe I can have a home again_.

It was a good feeling. A good hope. That didn’t mean he was opening up and spilling all of his secrets, or welcoming them into his heart. But he was… open to it. Receptive. They seemed like good people. And it meant he could escape his normal, boring life whenever he needed to. (Or could jump right back into it, when he needed a break from his exciting, super powered life. It was like a dream come true, honestly. Sometimes he wished that he would have kept a secret identity. That would have been _really_ great. Though hard to explain to the school.)

But then things changed.

Again.

There was an attack on Shuggazoom. Bone men held together by tendrils of black ooze. People were screaming, but Chiro was standing with his team—ready to face off against his adversary, whoever that might be.

They fought through wave after wave of the bone men, the Formless as Otto named them. They weren’t hard to dispatch—but some of them would reform. It was exhausting. Finally, the wave began to subside.

And then Chiro looked up.

Hovering over the battle was a metal robot. Black and red, with a large view screen on its front.

And on that viewscreen…

Chiro dropped to his knees. His stomach bottomed out.

The skeleton man smiled, and in a voice he had heard only in his dreams said, “After all these years, Chiro, we finally meet outside your mind.”

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> [want to send me a prompt of your own? find me here! ](https://ladytauria.tumblr.com/)


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